A predominantly one-topic blog: how is it that the most imminent and lethal implication for humankind - the fact that the doctrine of "Mutually Assured Destruction" will not work with Iran - is not being discussed in our media? Until it is recognized that MAD is dead, the Iranian threat will be treated as a threat only to Israel and not as the global threat which it in fact is.
A blog by Mladen Andrijasevic

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Sunday, May 26, 2013

Here is an excerpt, by permission from the author, from the soon to be published
book From Arab Spring to Islamic WinterbyRaphael Israeli,Professor
of Islamic, Middle Eastern and Chinese history at theHebrew University of Jerusalem, Chapter 8, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, and the Shi’ite Model, page 233:

During the Cold War, MAD (mutually assured
destruction) was the key to deterrence between the nuclear powers, who
understood that since each had the capacity to destroy the others many times
over, none of them would dare to initiate an attack. The assumption was that
the actors in both parts of the equation were rational and out fear of bringing
disaster upon their peoples and countries would certainly refrain from
precipitating a nuclear conflict. For that reason, paradoxically, it was the
presence of the ultimate weapons that assured they would not be used. But in
Iran, the situation may be totally different. We know from Ahmadinejad’s past
in the Basij militia
that he is a fanatic believer of the imminent return of the imam to earth,
something that he had prepared for as a mayor of Tehran, when he ordered the
widening of the main avenues of the city to absorb all the millions who would
flock to the streets to watch the return of the Hidden One. He also said that, when
speaking to the UN General Assembly as president of Iran, he could feel the
aura of the imam hovering over him and inspiring his speech. Since in Shi’ite
eschatology the imam would choose to return, after a millennium of hiding, at
precisely the worst moment of misery, injustice and oppression—what in other
eschatologies are called the “pangs of the Messiah”—precipitating his return by
an extreme and desperate tour de force, like using nuclear arms, could be
thought the best and most feasible avenue by mad rulers who do not subscribe to
the MAD theory. In other words, in the minds of irrational leaders, whose
considerations and reasoning are obscured by religious fanaticism, mutual
deterrence would not simply work.

Why would the Iranians wish to attack, and whom?
Usually, when leaders concoct a plan of attack, they keep mute about it for the
sake of the surprise effect, and they even try to create a reverse impression that
they harbor no aggressive intent toward their victim. Ahmadinejad, since his
advent to power, did not stop proclaiming his ambition to destroy Israel; to
put an end to Zionism, which is another wording for the same; to deny the
Holocaust; to instigate and dispatch terrorists against Israel and Jewish
targets; to convene international conferences about Holocaust denial; to
address the United Nations about his mad plan; to finance and instigate Hamas
and Hizbullah against Israel; and to convene and host annual meetings of Islamic
Terrorism International in his capital. On the contrary. Is anything else
needed to prove his intentions, and to see to it that the lunatic man who was put
at the helm of Iran must not possess nuclear arms? His intent against another
member state of the UN is clearly aggressive. Instead of the nations and the
secretary general initiating harsh reprisals by ejecting Iran from the UN until
it repents, they on the contrary attend the conferences convened by UN bodies
or under their auspices and listen courteously to Ahmadinejad’s convoluted
speeches of nonsense and incitement at the UN headquarters. An attack of the
sort threatened against Israel would be one of indiscriminate extermination and
genocide, motivated by hate and fanaticism, while a preventive Israeli attack
geared to preempt such a disaster would be directed only against the
threatening nuclear installations of Iran, though collateral damage will
unfortunately remain inevitable.

IDF chief of staff, Lieutenant General Benny
Gantz, declared in an interview broadcast on Israel’s sixty-fourth Independence
Day (May 2012) that “The IDF is ready to move against Iran the minute it
receives the green light.” “The Iranians are determined to build a nuclear weapon
while they continue to dupe the international community,” Minister of Defense
Ehud Barak added the following day. These very fateful declarations were not
gratuitous, for Israel’s leaders have been facing a series of existential
questions: should Israel attack Iran or pursue the diplomatic track? When, if
ever, is the right time to launch an attack? How should it be executed? How
will Iran’s leaders react to an onslaught on their nuclear facilities? The most
likely day-after scenario, as the international media sees it, is a devastating
Iranian response based mainly, though not entirely, on its long-range missile
arsenal. This attack would be coupled with terrorist strikes against Jewish and
Israeli targets abroad, and backed by Hizbullah, Iran’s proxy in Lebanon, and perhaps
Hamas, its agent in Gaza.

If Israel initiates a military strike, something
that is not likely to pass without response, it will face an unprecedented
security challenge. Similarly, the Iranians will be confronting Israel and the
West for the first time. An attack against Iran would be far different than the
bombing of the nuclear reactor in Iraq or the air strike against the reactor in
Syria because for Israel, the element of surprise is already gone with the
Iranians putting their nation in a virtual state of preparedness. We should assume that the regime in Tehran
will make every effort to cause Israel such severe damage as to impute to
itself the status of a regional power, for Iran cannot allow the campaign to
end with it appearing ruined and humiliated. Iran will also seek to safeguard
its nuclear project so that it can quickly resume operations if damaged. Those
that believe Iran’s geographical distance from Israel will limit the Iranian
response, and that it will consist mainly of long-range counter fire, fail to
take into account the Iran-Syria-Hizbullah axis that enables Iran to bridge
great distances, despite the current Syrian turmoil that has curtailed that
capacity. The Syrian situation allowing, the Iranian Republican Guard ground
forces could be deployed along Israel’s northern border and even engage the IDF
in a protracted guerilla campaign on the frontlines.

Tuesday, May 14, 2013

When—and it is most probably now a question of when, rather than
if—Israel is forced to bomb Iran's uranium enrichment facilities, the Israeli
government will immediately face a cacophony of denunciation from the press in
America and abroad; the international left; the United Nations General
Assembly; 20 secretly delighted but fantastically hypocritical Arab states;
some Democratic legislators in Washington, D.C.; and a large assortment of
European politicians. Critics will doubtless harp on about international law
and claim that no right exists for pre-emptive military action. So it would be
wise for friends of Israel to mug up on their ancient and modern history to
refute this claim.

The right, indeed the
duty, of nations to proactively defend themselves from foes who seek their
destruction with new and terrifying weaponry far pre-dates President George W.
Bush and Iraq. It goes back earlier than Israel's successful pre-emptive
attacks on Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981 (not to mention other
pre-emptive Israeli attacks like the one on the Syrian nuclear program in
2007). It even predates Israel's 1967 pre-emption of massed Arab armies, a move
that saved the Jewish state. History is replete with examples when pre-emption
was successful, as well as occasions when, because pre-emption wasn't employed,
catastrophe struck.

When it became clear that the Emperor Napoleon was about to
commandeer the large and formidable Danish navy stationed at Copenhagen in
1807, the British Royal Navy attacked without a declaration of war and either
sank, disabled or captured almost the entire fleet. No one screamed about
"international law" in those days, of course, any more than statesmen
would have cared if they had. Neither did Winston Churchill give any warning to
the Ottoman Empire, a German ally, when he ordered the bombardment of the
Dardanelles Outer Forts in November 1914, also without a war declaration.

Similarly—though there were plenty of warnings given—Britain was
formally at peace with her former ally France in July 1940 when Churchill
ordered the sinking of the French fleet harbored near Oran in French Algeria,
for which he was rightly cheered to the echo in the House of Commons. The sheer
danger of a large naval force falling into Hitler's hands when Britain was
fighting for its survival during the Battle of Britain justified the action,
and the exigencies of international law could rightly go hang.

Looking further back, and thinking counterfactually, as historians
are occasionally permitted to do, there have been several wars in which
devastating new weaponry spelled disaster for the victims of the power
developing them, and the victims would have been much better off using
pre-emption.

In the Middle Eastern context, Goliath ought to have charged down
David long before he was able to employ his slingshot and river pebbles to such
devastating effect. The Egyptians should have attacked the Hittites as soon as
the Egyptians suspected they were developing the chariot as a weapon of war.
Had the Mayans and Incas assaulted the conquistadores as soon as they stepped
ashore—and thus before the Spaniards could deploy their muskets, horses, metal
armor, hand-held firearms and smallpox to crush them—they might not have seen
their civilizations wiped out.

The Mamelukes and
Janisseries shouldn't have waited to be slaughtered by Napoleon's cannon at the
battle of the Pyramids; the Khalifa needed to hit Kitchener on his way to
Omdurman in the River War of the late 19th century, not once he'd set up his
machine guns on the banks of the Nile; and so on.

Often in history, massive pre-emption has been the only sensible
strategy when facing a new weapon in the hands of one's sworn enemy, regardless
of international law—the sole effect of which has been to hamper the West,
since those countries that break it can only be indicted if they lose, whereas
civilized powers generally have to abide by its restrictions.

Consider a counterfactual analogy that will weigh heavily on
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as he struggles with his historic
decision. If the French Defense Minister André Maginot, instead of investing so
heavily in his defensive line in the mid-1930s, had thought offensively about
how to smash the German army the moment it crossed the Versailles Treaty's
"red lines" in the Saar and the Rhineland, some six million Jews
might have survived.

The slingshot, chariot, musket, cannon, machine-guns: All were
used to devastating effect against opponents that seemed to be stronger with
conventional weaponry but were overcome by the weaker power with new weapons
that weren't pre-emptively destroyed. Since President Obama's second inaugural
address has made it painfully obvious that the U.S. will not act to prevent
Iran from enriching more than 250 kilos of 20% enriched uranium, enough for a
nuclear bomb, Israel will have to.

Mr. Netanyahu might not have international bien pensant opinion
on his side as he makes his choice, but he has something far more powerful: the
witness of history.

Mr. Roberts, a historian, is the author, most
recently, of "The Storm of War: A New History of the Second World
War" (Harper, 2011).

A
version of this article appeared May 1, 2013, on page A17 in the U.S. edition
of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: The Case for Pre-Emptive War,
From Goliath to the Dardanelles.

Saturday, May 4, 2013

We have finally reached the point George Orwell warned us
about in 1949 when his novel 1984 was published. We cannot defend ourselves any more
because the official government vocabulary has been stripped of the words to formulate
the problem in the first place.

Although Orwell expected Newspeak to be adopted by 2050, he was wrong.
Newspeak is already in effect.

As Robert Spencer points
out , “FBI had no idea how to
tell whether or not Tamerlan Tsarnaev was “engaging in extremist activity,”
because the “extremist activity” he was engaging in was Islamic jihad, andObama’s FBI is forbidden to study Islamic jihad.This is because the Obama Administration in 2011 mandated the
scrubbing of counter-terror training materials of the truth about Islam and
jihad.”

Below
is the entire appendix to 1984, THE
PRINCIPLES OF NEWSPEAK. It should become required reading for anyone who
wishes to remain sane.

It is scary that an average New Yorker today is less
informed about what is transpiring in the world around than were Soviet
citizens in 1970s under the Soviet regime. At least the Russians understood
that the their press was garbage and sought to get vital info from the VOA, the
BBC (at that time the BBC was not what it has become today), Radio Free Europe
or Samizdat publications. The fact that millions of New Yorkers swallow
articles like A
Battered Dream, Then a Violent Path without protest is embarrassing. The density
of stupidity has passed the critical mass. At the time the access to
information is the easiest in human history, the wish to access this
information has gone down, resulting in a detached, ignorant and apathetic
majority. How many New Yorkers have read Bosch
Fawstin’sarticle infrontpage?

We in Israel should start screaming at the top
of our voices about these ignorant fools
in the US endangering not only their own lives, but endangering much more our
lives in Israel with their PC and in their refusal to face the problem of
jihadism, in their refusal to take the Twelvers' eschatology seriously.

Appendix.

The Principles of Newspeak

Newspeak was the official language of Oceania and had been devised
to meet the ideological needs of Ingsoc, or English Socialism. In the year 1984
there was not as yet anyone who used Newspeak as his sole means of
communication, either in speech or writing. The leading articles in ‘The Times’
were written in it, but this was a TOUR DE FORCE which could only be carried
out by a specialist. It was expected that Newspeak would have finally
superseded Oldspeak (or Standard English, as we should call it) by about the
year 2050. Meanwhile it gained ground steadily, all Party members tending to
use Newspeak words and grammatical constructions more and more in their
everyday speech. The version in use in 1984, and embodied in the Ninth and Tenth
Editions of the Newspeak Dictionary, was a provisional one, and contained many
superfluous words and archaic formations which were due to be suppressed later.
It is with the final, perfected version, as embodied in the Eleventh Edition of
the Dictionary, that we are concerned here.

The purpose of Newspeak was
not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits
proper to the devotees of Ingsoc, but to make all other modes of thought
impossible. It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for
all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought — that is, a thought diverging
from the principles of Ingsoc — should be literally unthinkable, at least so
far as thought is dependent on words. Its vocabulary was so constructed as to
give exact and often very subtle expression to every meaning that a Party
member could properly wish to express, while excluding all other meanings and
also the possibility of arriving at them by indirect methods. This was done
partly by the invention of new words, but chiefly by eliminating undesirable
words and by stripping such words as remained of unorthodox meanings, and so
far as possible of all secondary meanings whatever. To give a single example.
The word FREE still existed in Newspeak, but it could only be used in such
statements as ‘This dog is free from lice’ or ‘This field is free from weeds’.
It could not be used in its old sense of ‘politically free’ or ‘intellectually
free’ since political and intellectual freedom no longer existed even as
concepts, and were therefore of necessity nameless. Quite apart from the
suppression of definitely heretical words, reduction of vocabulary was regarded
as an end in itself, and no word that could be dispensed with was allowed to
survive. Newspeak was designed not to extend but to DIMINISH the range of
thought, and this purpose was indirectly assisted by cutting the choice of
words down to a minimum.

Newspeak was founded on the
English language as we now know it, though many Newspeak sentences, even when
not containing newly-created words, would be barely intelligible to an
English-speaker of our own day. Newspeak words were divided into three distinct
classes, known as the A vocabulary, the B vocabulary (also called compound
words), and the C vocabulary. It will be simpler to discuss each class
separately, but the grammatical peculiarities of the language can be dealt with
in the section devoted to the A vocabulary, since the same rules held good for
all three categories.

THE A VOCABULARY. The A vocabulary
consisted of the words needed for the business of everyday life — for such
things as eating, drinking, working, putting on one’s clothes, going up and
down stairs, riding in vehicles, gardening, cooking, and the like. It was
composed almost entirely of words that we already possess words like HIT, RUN,
DOG, TREE, SUGAR, HOUSE, FIELD— but in comparison with the present-day English
vocabulary their number was extremely small, while their meanings were far more
rigidly defined. All ambiguities and shades of meaning had been purged out of
them. So far as it could be achieved, a Newspeak word of this class was simply
a staccato sound expressing ONE clearly understood concept. It would have been
quite impossible to use the A vocabulary for literary purposes or for political
or philosophical discussion. It was intended only to express simple, purposive
thoughts, usually involving concrete objects or physical actions.

The grammar of Newspeak had
two outstanding peculiarities. The first of these was an almost complete
interchangeability between different parts of speech. Any word in the language
(in principle this applied even to very abstract words such as IF or WHEN)
could be used either as verb, noun, adjective, or adverb. Between the verb and
the noun form, when they were of the same root, there was never any variation,
this rule of itself involving the destruction of many archaic forms. The word
THOUGHT, for example, did not exist in Newspeak. Its place was taken by THINK,
which did duty for both noun and verb. No etymological principle was followed
here: in some cases it was the original noun that was chosen for retention, in
other cases the verb. Even where a noun and verb of kindred meaning were not
etymologically connected, one or other of them was frequently suppressed. There
was, for example, no such word as CUT, its meaning being sufficiently covered
by the noun-verb KNIFE. Adjectives were formed by adding the suffix — FUL to
the noun-verb, and adverbs by adding — WISE. Thus for example, SPEEDFUL meant
‘rapid’ and SPEEDWISE meant ‘quickly’. Certain of our present-day adjectives,
such as GOOD, STRONG, BIG, BLACK, SOFT, were retained, but their total number
was very small. There was little need for them, since almost any adjectival
meaning could be arrived at by adding — FUL to a noun-verb. None of the
now-existing adverbs was retained, except for a very few already ending in —
WISE: the — WISE termination was invariable. The word WELL, for example, was
replaced by GOODWISE.

In addition, any word — this
again applied in principle to every word in the language — could be negatived
by adding the affix UN-, or could be strengthened by the affix PLUS-, or, for
still greater emphasis, DOUBLEPLUS-. Thus, for example, UNCOLD meant ‘warm’,
while PLUSCOLD and DOUBLEPLUSCOLD meant, respectively, ‘very cold’ and
‘superlatively cold’. It was also possible, as in present-day English, to
modify the meaning of almost any word by prepositional affixes such as ANTE-,
POST-, UP-, DOWN-, etc. By such methods it was found possible to bring about an
enormous diminution of vocabulary. Given, for instance, the word GOOD, there
was no need for such a word as BAD, since the required meaning was equally well
— indeed, better — expressed by UNGOOD. All that was necessary, in any case
where two words formed a natural pair of opposites, was to decide which of them
to suppress. DARK, for example, could be replaced by UNLIGHT, or LIGHT by
UNDARK, according to preference.

The second distinguishing
mark of Newspeak grammar was its regularity. Subject to a few exceptions which
are mentioned below all inflexions followed the same rules. Thus, in all verbs
the preterite and the past participle were the same and ended in — ED. The
preterite of STEAL was STEALED, the preterite of THINK was THINKED, and so on
throughout the language, all such forms as SWAM, GAVE, BROUGHT, SPOKE, TAKEN,
etc., being abolished. All plurals were made by adding — S or — ES as the case
might be. The plurals OF MAN, OX, LIFE, were MANS, OXES, LIFES. Comparison of
adjectives was invariably made by adding — ER, — EST (GOOD, GOODER, GOODEST),
irregular forms and the MORE, MOST formation being suppressed.

The only classes of words
that were still allowed to inflect irregularly were the pronouns, the
relatives, the demonstrative adjectives, and the auxiliary verbs. All of these
followed their ancient usage, except that WHOM had been scrapped as
unnecessary, and the SHALL, SHOULD tenses had been dropped, all their uses
being covered by WILL and WOULD. There were also certain irregularities in
word-formation arising out of the need for rapid and easy speech. A word which
was difficult to utter, or was liable to be incorrectly heard, was held to be
ipso facto a bad word; occasionally therefore, for the sake of euphony, extra
letters were inserted into a word or an archaic formation was retained. But
this need made itself felt chiefly in connexion with the B vocabulary. WHY so
great an importance was attached to ease of pronunciation will be made clear later
in this essay.

THE B VOCABULARY. The B
vocabulary consisted of words which had been deliberately constructed for
political purposes: words, that is to say, which not only had in every case a
political implication, but were intended to impose a desirable mental attitude
upon the person using them. Without a full understanding of the principles of
Ingsoc it was difficult to use these words correctly. In some cases they could
be translated into Oldspeak, or even into words taken from the A vocabulary,
but this usually demanded a long paraphrase and always involved the loss of
certain overtones. The B words were a sort of verbal shorthand, often packing
whole ranges of ideas into a few syllables, and at the same time more accurate
and forcible than ordinary language.

The B words were in all cases
compound words. [Compound words such as SPEAKWRITE, were of course to be found
in the A vocabulary, but these were merely convenient abbreviations and had no
special ideological colour.] They consisted of two or more words, or portions
of words, welded together in an easily pronounceable form. The resulting
amalgam was always a noun-verb, and inflected according to the ordinary rules.
To take a single example: the word GOODTHINK, meaning, very roughly,
‘orthodoxy’, or, if one chose to regard it as a verb, ‘to think in an orthodox
manner’. This inflected as follows: noun-verb, GOODTHINK; past tense and past
participle, GOODTHINKED; present participle, GOOD-THINKING; adjective,
GOODTHINKFUL; adverb, GOODTHINKWISE; verbal noun, GOODTHINKER.

The B words were not
constructed on any etymological plan. The words of which they were made up
could be any parts of speech, and could be placed in any order and mutilated in
any way which made them easy to pronounce while indicating their derivation. In
the word CRIMETHINK (thoughtcrime), for instance, the THINK came second,
whereas in THINKPOL (Thought Police) it came first, and in the latter word
POLICE had lost its second syllable. Because of the great difficulty in
securing euphony, irregular formations were commoner in the B vocabulary than
in the A vocabulary. For example, the adjective forms of MINITRUE, MINIPAX, and
MINILUV were, respectively, MINITRUTHFUL, MINIPEACEFUL, and MINILOVELY, simply
because — TRUEFUL, -PAXFUL, and — LOVEFUL were slightly awkward to pronounce.
In principle, however, all B words could inflect, and all inflected in exactly
the same way.

Some of the B words had
highly subtilized meanings, barely intelligible to anyone who had not mastered
the language as a whole. Consider, for example, such a typical sentence from a
‘Times’ leading article as OLDTHINKERS UNBELLYFEEL INGSOC. The shortest
rendering that one could make of this in Oldspeak would be: ‘Those whose ideas
were formed before the Revolution cannot have a full emotional understanding of
the principles of English Socialism.’ But this is not an adequate translation.
To begin with, in order to grasp the full meaning of the Newspeak sentence
quoted above, one would have to have a clear idea of what is meant by INGSOC.
And in addition, only a person thoroughly grounded in Ingsoc could appreciate
the full force of the word BELLYFEEL, which implied a blind, enthusiastic
acceptance difficult to imagine today; or of the word OLDTHINK, which was
inextricably mixed up with the idea of wickedness and decadence. But the
special function of certain Newspeak words, of which OLDTHINK was one, was not
so much to express meanings as to destroy them. These words, necessarily few in
number, had had their meanings extended until they contained within themselves
whole batteries of words which, as they were sufficiently covered by a single
comprehensive term, could now be scrapped and forgotten. The greatest
difficulty facing the compilers of the Newspeak Dictionary was not to invent
new words, but, having invented them, to make sure what they meant: to make
sure, that is to say, what ranges of words they cancelled by their existence.

As we have already seen in
the case of the word FREE, words which had once borne a heretical meaning were
sometimes retained for the sake of convenience, but only with the undesirable
meanings purged out of them. Countless other words such as HONOUR, JUSTICE,
MORALITY, INTERNATIONALISM, DEMOCRACY, SCIENCE, and RELIGION had simply ceased
to exist. A few blanket words covered them, and, in covering them, abolished
them. All words grouping themselves round the concepts of liberty and equality,
for instance, were contained in the single word CRIMETHINK, while all words
grouping themselves round the concepts of objectivity and rationalism were
contained in the single word OLDTHINK. Greater precision would have been
dangerous. What was required in a Party member was an outlook similar to that
of the ancient Hebrew who knew, without knowing much else, that all nations
other than his own worshipped ‘false gods’. He did not need to know that these
gods were called Baal, Osiris, Moloch, Ashtaroth, and the like: probably the
less he knew about them the better for his orthodoxy. He knew Jehovah and the
commandments of Jehovah: he knew, therefore, that all gods with other names or
other attributes were false gods. In somewhat the same way, the party member
knew what constituted right conduct, and in exceedingly vague, generalized
terms he knew what kinds of departure from it were possible. His sexual life,
for example, was entirely regulated by the two Newspeak words SEXCRIME (sexual
immorality) and GOODSEX (chastity). SEXCRIME covered all sexual misdeeds
whatever. It covered fornication, adultery, homosexuality, and other
perversions, and, in addition, normal intercourse practised for its own sake.
There was no need to enumerate them separately, since they were all equally
culpable, and, in principle, all punishable by death. In the C vocabulary,
which consisted of scientific and technical words, it might be necessary to
give specialized names to certain sexual aberrations, but the ordinary citizen
had no need of them. He knew what was meant by GOODSEX— that is to say, normal
intercourse between man and wife, for the sole purpose of begetting children,
and without physical pleasure on the part of the woman: all else was SEXCRIME.
In Newspeak it was seldom possible to follow a heretical thought further than
the perception that it WAS heretical: beyond that point the necessary words
were nonexistent.

No word in the B vocabulary
was ideologically neutral. A great many were euphemisms. Such words, for
instance, as JOYCAMP (forced-labour camp) or MINIPAX (Ministry of Peace, i.e.
Ministry of War) meant almost the exact opposite of what they appeared to mean.
Some words, on the other hand, displayed a frank and contemptuous understanding
of the real nature of Oceanic society. An example was PROLEFEED, meaning the
rubbishy entertainment and spurious news which the Party handed out to the
masses. Other words, again, were ambivalent, having the connotation ‘good’ when
applied to the Party and ‘bad’ when applied to its enemies. But in addition
there were great numbers of words which at first sight appeared to be mere
abbreviations and which derived their ideological colour not from their
meaning, but from their structure.

So far as it could be
contrived, everything that had or might have political significance of any kind
was fitted into the B vocabulary. The name of every organization, or body of
people, or doctrine, or country, or institution, or public building, was
invariably cut down into the familiar shape; that is, a single easily
pronounced word with the smallest number of syllables that would preserve the
original derivation. In the Ministry of Truth, for example, the Records
Department, in which Winston Smith worked, was called RECDEP, the Fiction
Department was called FICDEP, the Teleprogrammes Department was called TELEDEP,
and so on. This was not done solely with the object of saving time. Even in the
early decades of the twentieth century, telescoped words and phrases had been
one of the characteristic features of political language; and it had been
noticed that the tendency to use abbreviations of this kind was most marked in
totalitarian countries and totalitarian organizations. Examples were such words
as NAZI, GESTAPO, COMINTERN, INPRECORR, AGITPROP. In the beginning the practice
had been adopted as it were instinctively, but in Newspeak it was used with a
conscious purpose. It was perceived that in thus abbreviating a name one
narrowed and subtly altered its meaning, by cutting out most of the
associations that would otherwise cling to it. The words COMMUNIST
INTERNATIONAL, for instance, call up a composite picture of universal human
brotherhood, red flags, barricades, Karl Marx, and the Paris Commune. The word
COMINTERN, on the other hand, suggests merely a tightly-knit organization and a
well-defined body of doctrine. It refers to something almost as easily
recognized, and as limited in purpose, as a chair or a table. COMINTERN is a
word that can be uttered almost without taking thought, whereas COMMUNIST
INTERNATIONAL is a phrase over which one is obliged to linger at least
momentarily. In the same way, the associations called up by a word like
MINITRUE are fewer and more controllable than those called up by MINISTRY OF
TRUTH. This accounted not only for the habit of abbreviating whenever possible,
but also for the almost exaggerated care that was taken to make every word
easily pronounceable.

In Newspeak, euphony
outweighed every consideration other than exactitude of meaning. Regularity of
grammar was always sacrificed to it when it seemed necessary. And rightly so,
since what was required, above all for political purposes, was short clipped
words of unmistakable meaning which could be uttered rapidly and which roused
the minimum of echoes in the speaker’s mind. The words of the B vocabulary even
gained in force from the fact that nearly all of them were very much alike.
Almost invariably these words — GOODTHINK, MINIPAX, PROLEFEED, SEXCRIME,
JOYCAMP, INGSOC, BELLYFEEL, THINKPOL, and countless others — were words of two
or three syllables, with the stress distributed equally between the first
syllable and the last. The use of them encouraged a gabbling style of speech,
at once staccato and monotonous. And this was exactly what was aimed at. The
intention was to make speech, and especially speech on any subject not
ideologically neutral, as nearly as possible independent of consciousness. For
the purposes of everyday life it was no doubt necessary, or sometimes
necessary, to reflect before speaking, but a Party member called upon to make a
political or ethical judgement should be able to spray forth the correct
opinions as automatically as a machine gun spraying forth bullets. His training
fitted him to do this, the language gave him an almost foolproof instrument,
and the texture of the words, with their harsh sound and a certain wilful
ugliness which was in accord with the spirit of Ingsoc, assisted the process
still further.

So did the fact of having
very few words to choose from. Relative to our own, the Newspeak vocabulary was
tiny, and new ways of reducing it were constantly being devised. Newspeak,
indeed, differed from most all other languages in that its vocabulary grew
smaller instead of larger every year. Each reduction was a gain, since the
smaller the area of choice, the smaller the temptation to take thought.
Ultimately it was hoped to make articulate speech issue from the larynx without
involving the higher brain centres at all. This aim was frankly admitted in the
Newspeak word DUCKSPEAK, meaning ‘to quack like a duck’. Like various other
words in the B vocabulary, DUCKSPEAK was ambivalent in meaning. Provided that
the opinions which were quacked out were orthodox ones, it implied nothing but
praise, and when ‘The Times’ referred to one of the orators of the Party as a
DOUBLEPLUSGOOD DUCKSPEAKER it was paying a warm and valued compliment.

THE C VOCABULARY. The C vocabulary
was supplementary to the others and consisted entirely of scientific and
technical terms. These resembled the scientific terms in use today, and were
constructed from the same roots, but the usual care was taken to define them
rigidly and strip them of undesirable meanings. They followed the same
grammatical rules as the words in the other two vocabularies. Very few of the C
words had any currency either in everyday speech or in political speech. Any
scientific worker or technician could find all the words he needed in the list
devoted to his own speciality, but he seldom had more than a smattering of the
words occurring in the other lists. Only a very few words were common to all
lists, and there was no vocabulary expressing the function of Science as a
habit of mind, or a method of thought, irrespective of its particular branches.
There was, indeed, no word for ‘Science’, any meaning that it could possibly
bear being already sufficiently covered by the word INGSOC.

From the foregoing account it
will be seen that in Newspeak the expression of unorthodox opinions, above a
very low level, was well-nigh impossible. It was of course possible to utter
heresies of a very crude kind, a species of blasphemy. It would have been
possible, for example, to say BIG BROTHER IS UNGOOD. But this statement, which
to an orthodox ear merely conveyed a self-evident absurdity, could not have
been sustained by reasoned argument, because the necessary words were not
available. Ideas inimical to Ingsoc could only be entertained in a vague
wordless form, and could only be named in very broad terms which lumped
together and condemned whole groups of heresies without defining them in doing
so. One could, in fact, only use Newspeak for unorthodox purposes by
illegitimately translating some of the words back into Oldspeak. For example,
ALL MANS ARE EQUAL was a possible Newspeak sentence, but only in the same sense
in which ALL MEN ARE REDHAIRED is a possible Oldspeak sentence. It did not
contain a grammatical error, but it expressed a palpable untruth — i.e. that
all men are of equal size, weight, or strength. The concept of political
equality no longer existed, and this secondary meaning had accordingly been
purged out of the word EQUAL. In 1984, when Oldspeak was still the normal means
of communication, the danger theoretically existed that in using Newspeak words
one might remember their original meanings. In practice it was not difficult
for any person well grounded in DOUBLETHINK to avoid doing this, but within a
couple of generations even the possibility of such a lapse would have vanished.
A person growing up with Newspeak as his sole language would no more know that
EQUAL had once had the secondary meaning of ‘politically equal’, or that FREE
had once meant ‘intellectually free’, than for instance, a person who had never
heard of chess would be aware of the secondary meanings attaching to QUEEN and
ROOK. There would be many crimes and errors which it would be beyond his power
to commit, simply because they were nameless and therefore unimaginable. And it
was to be foreseen that with the passage of time the distinguishing
characteristics of Newspeak would become more and more pronounced — its words
growing fewer and fewer, their meanings more and more rigid, and the chance of putting
them to improper uses always diminishing.

When Oldspeak had been once
and for all superseded, the last link with the past would have been severed.
History had already been rewritten, but fragments of the literature of the past
survived here and there, imperfectly censored, and so long as one retained
one’s knowledge of Oldspeak it was possible to read them. In the future such
fragments, even if they chanced to survive, would be unintelligible and
untranslatable. It was impossible to translate any passage of Oldspeak into
Newspeak unless it either referred to some technical process or some very
simple everyday action, or was already orthodox (GOODTHINKFUL would be the
Newspeak expression) in tendency. In practice this meant that no book written
before approximately 1960 could be translated as a whole. Pre-revolutionary
literature could only be subjected to ideological translation — that is,
alteration in sense as well as language. Take for example the well-known
passage from the Declaration of Independence:

WE HOLD THESE TRUTHS TO BE
SELF-EVIDENT, THAT ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL, THAT THEY ARE ENDOWED BY THEIR
CREATOR WITH CERTAIN INALIENABLE RIGHTS, THAT AMONG THESE ARE LIFE, LIBERTY,
AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS. THAT TO SECURE THESE RIGHTS, GOVERNMENTS ARE
INSTITUTED AMONG MEN, DERIVING THEIR POWERS FROM THE CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED.
THAT WHENEVER ANY FORM OF GOVERNMENT BECOMES DESTRUCTIVE OF THOSE ENDS, IT IS
THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO ALTER OR ABOLISH IT, AND TO INSTITUTE NEW GOVERNMENT
. . .

It would have been quite
impossible to render this into Newspeak while keeping to the sense of the
original. The nearest one could come to doing so would be to swallow the whole
passage up in the single word CRIMETHINK. A full translation could only be an
ideological translation, whereby Jefferson’s words would be changed into a
panegyric on absolute government.

A good deal of the literature
of the past was, indeed, already being transformed in this way. Considerations
of prestige made it desirable to preserve the memory of certain historical
figures, while at the same time bringing their achievements into line with the
philosophy of Ingsoc. Various writers, such as Shakespeare, Milton, Swift,
Byron, Dickens, and some others were therefore in process of translation: when
the task had been completed, their original writings, with all else that
survived of the literature of the past, would be destroyed. These translations
were a slow and difficult business, and it was not expected that they would be
finished before the first or second decade of the twenty-first century. There
were also large quantities of merely utilitarian literature — indispensable
technical manuals, and the like — that had to be treated in the same way. It
was chiefly in order to allow time for the preliminary work of translation that
the final adoption of Newspeak had been fixed for so late a date as 2050.

Thursday, May 2, 2013

Caroline
Glick is right to have brought the disagreement with Dershowitz into the open.
After all, our lives here in Israel are impacted by American politicians and media
who understand nothing about the Islamic theology and ideology in general and
Shia eschatology in particular and what is more, they refuse to educate themselves.

Case
in point is Harvard Law Prof. Alan Dershowitz.

Dershowitz is rightly considered one of Israel’s most
outspoken defenders in the US. But like his fellow leftist ideologues,
Dershowitz apparently does not think that it is important to focus on the
nature of things in the Islamic world. Rather than notice current realities, he
places his faith in his power to shape the future through his intellect and his
willingness to compromise.

In an interview withNew York Jewish Week following
his participation at Sunday’sJerusalem Post’s conference in New York, Dershowitz said he was
astonished by both my remarks on Iran and the audience’s response to my remarks.

He told the paper, “She said, ‘Bombs away,’ and they gave her
a standing ovation.”

One of the things that distinguish thePost’s readers from most other news consumers is that our readers
have educated themselves in the realities of Israel and the region and pay
attention to those realities.

As a consequence, they are less affected by anti-Israel
propaganda presented as human rights reports than the vast majority of news
consumers in the US.

When I addressed the conference, I said I would limit my
discussion of Iran to two words, “Bombs away.” I said that because like thePost’s readers, I base my analysis of Iran’s nuclear weapons
program on the nature of the Iranian regime.

The Iranian regime is a totalitarian regime. It has an
uninterrupted record of torturing and massacring its citizens. It has
threatened to annihilate Israel. It is the largest state sponsor of terrorism
in the world.

Economic sanctions are only viable against regimes that care
about serving their citizenry. A regime that represses its citizens is not
going to be moved from its strategic course by international sanctions that
embitter the lives of its citizens. Since the Iranian regime does not care
about its citizens, it cannot be diverted from its plans to acquire nuclear
weapons through economic sanctions, no matter how harsh.

As for reaching an agreement with the Iranian regime that
would induce it to end its nuclear weapons program, this aspiration is
similarly based on a denial of the nature of the regime. The first act of the
regime was to reject the foundations of the international system. The Iranian
takeover of the US Embassy in 1979 was not merely an act of war against America.
It was a declaration of war against the international legal system. Since then,
nothing the Iranian regime has done, including emerging as the largest state
sponsor of terrorism in the world, has brought it closer to accepting the norms
of behavior expected from a member of the family of nations. As a consequence,
the notion that this regime would honor any nuclear agreement it may sign with
the US or any other international party is ridiculous.

Since traditional forms of statecraft that do not involve the
use of force are not viable options for statecraft involving Iran, the only
viable option for preventing Iran – particularly at this late stage – from
becoming a nuclear power is force. If Israel is serious when it says that a
nuclear-armed Iran is an existential threat to the Jewish state then Israel
must attack Iran’s nuclear installations.

Because the Post’s readers are informed about the nature of
the Iranian regime, they appreciated the message I telegraphed in saying “Bombs
away.” But Dershowitz was astonished.

Robert Spencer explained
best what the problem with the American assessment of the threat is:

The other is
that the FBI had no idea how to tell whether or not Tamerlan Tsarnaev was “engaging
in extremist activity,” because the “extremist activity” he was engaging in was
Islamic jihad, and Obama’s FBI is forbidden to study Islamic jihad.This is
because the Obama Administration in 2011 mandated the scrubbing of
counter-terror training materials of the truth about Islam and jihad. It is the
terror threat that dare not speak its name.

It is
scary that we in Israel indirectly depend on the assessment of people who
cannot even protect themselves because they refuse to acknowledge the nature of
the problem. This is even more dangerous when Iran is concerned. What the Obama administration is doing was so
brilliantly predicted by George Orwell in the appendix to 1984. Newspeak
strips us of the means to protect ourselves.

The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the
world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc, but to make all
other modes of thought impossible. It was intended that when Newspeak had been
adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought — that is,
a thought diverging from the principles of Ingsoc — should be literally
unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words. Its vocabulary
was so constructed as to give exact and often very subtle expression to every
meaning that a Party member could properly wish to express, while excluding all
other meanings and also the possibility of arriving at them by indirect
methods. This was done partly by the invention of new words, but chiefly by
eliminating undesirable words and by stripping such words as remained of
unorthodox meanings, and so far as possible of all secondary meanings whatever.
To give a single example. The word free still existed in Newspeak, but it could
only be used in such statements as ‘This dog is free from lice’ or ‘This field
is free from weeds’. It could not be used in its old sense of ‘politically
free’ or ‘intellectually free’ since political and intellectual freedom no
longer existed even as concepts, and were therefore of necessity nameless.
Quite apart from the suppression of definitely heretical words, reduction of
vocabulary was regarded as an end in itself, and no word that could be
dispensed with was allowed to survive. Newspeak was designed not to extend but
to diminish the range of thought, and this purpose was indirectly assisted by
cutting the choice of words down to a minimum.

It was impossible to translate any passage of Oldspeak into Newspeak unless it
either referred to some technical process or some very simple everyday action,
or was already orthodox (goodthinkful would be the Newspeak expression) in
tendency. In practice this meant that no book written before approximately 1960
could be translated as a whole. Pre-revolutionary literature could only be
subjected to ideological translation — that is, alteration in sense as well as
language. Take for example the well-known passage from the Declaration of
Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,
that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that
among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure
these rights, Governments are instituted among men, deriving their powers from
the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of Government becomes
destructive of those ends, it is the right of the People to alter or abolish
it, and to institute new Government...

It would have been quite impossible to render this into Newspeak while keeping
to the sense of the original. The nearest one could come to doing so would be
to swallow the whole passage up in the single word crimethink. A full
translation could only be an ideological translation, whereby Jefferson's words
would be changed into a panegyric on absolute government.